


Growing Pains

by quadrotriticale



Category: Marvel, X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, POV Alex Summers, POV Second Person, Past Child Abuse, implied tho, tldr alex has a bad time and scotts parents are bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 07:59:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15166166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrotriticale/pseuds/quadrotriticale
Summary: The mansion is big, and it doesn’t make sense in your head that it belongs to one person. You don’t ask him about it- Charles is a little bit distant and uncomfortable for you to talk to, but you don’t understand why he needs all the space he has. You don’t understand what he could possibly have to use it for. You think that, maybe, rich people just have things they don't need to prove that they're rich. You really, really, don't understand why.





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> im gay and my modus operandi is writing about alex summers but the plot twist is everything i write about him exists in my own personal universe. theres no plot i just like writing about alex

Your name is Alex, just Alex, you’re 17, and this jacket is the first thing that’s ever belonged to you. It’s too big and it’s heavy on your shoulders, but it’s yours. You like the feeling of the leather under your hands, like the weight of it, like that it lets you bury your hands. You don’t take it off unless you have to, you don’t let it out of your sight unless you're sleeping.

The mansion is big, and it doesn’t make sense in your head that it belongs to one person. You don’t ask him about it- Charles is a little bit distant and uncomfortable for you to talk to, but you don’t understand why he needs all the space he has. You don’t understand what he could possibly have to use it for. You think that, maybe, rich people just have things they don't need to prove that they're rich. You really, really, don't understand why.

You have a room that he tells you is yours, and you don’t know how to feel about that. You can come and go as you please and it doesn’t make sense in your head, doesn’t process properly, freedom doesn’t make sense. You don’t get used to it, that first year you spend in Westchester. You don’t ever really get used to it. 

Armando is 19, and he calls himself Darwin, and you don’t understand why he makes your stomach do somersaults until you’re sitting with him alone and some voice in your head, a betrayer, a traitor, suggests that you kiss him. (You want to, oh, lord, you want to kiss him until your lips bruise and you can’t breathe and you forget everything and everyone who’s ever hurt you, everyone who’s ever ruined this for you, because he's beautiful, he's incredible, he keeps showing you that he's not going to hurt you and he's here to help you, to be a friend, to support you when you need it. You don't always believe him, but he's belligerent about it, he doesn't stop trying to get you to believe him.) Darwin is taller than you, lean and dark skinned and easy to be around and whatever part of you that hasn’t lost it’s naivety trusts his lazy smiles and his gentle words, trusts that he won't hurt you when he places a hand on your arm or loops his arm around your shoulder. He knows you aren’t okay, and he’s alright with that. You try to hurt him when you get bad, try to blow him away with swaths of plasma that you can't control, but you can’t hurt him, and he doesn’t leave.

You kiss him one evening, alone in a quiet room somewhere deep in the mansion, high and dizzy and desperate for affection. He doesn’t force you to do anything, and your body gets so hot that you can feel the texture of his skin changing under your hands. He doesn’t say anything about it, doesn't look at you weird or push you away, but your stomach tangles into knots and you have to excuse yourself before you start to panic. Your jacket doesn’t burn, and neither do the rest of your clothes.

(You think about big men and dark rooms and hands where they shouldn’t be, think of corpses and charred bodies and rubble, and as you shake you burn a hole through the sheets of your bed, but not your clothes. You lay on the floor that night, and you don’t sleep. )

Hank is 19 too, too thin and too wiry, eyes behind coke bottle glasses. He doesn’t like his feet, but you think they’re cool. You don’t really tell him that in a way that's at all direct. He isn't good with subtext, so he doesn't get it. 

Hank isn’t like Darwin. Darwin won’t stop trying to help you when you break down- you can’t hurt him, won’t hurt him, he’s not afraid of you, but you could break Hank if you aren’t careful. Hank tries to be nice to you, and you don’t know how to deal with that, because he's not Darwin, and you've only gotten far enough to be comfortable with Darwin.

You burn Hank's books, his lab, everything. You're not sure what else to do.

(He doesn’t stop and you really wish he would.)

You don’t ever really get used to him. You never really get completely used to Darwin either, though you find his presence soothing, find him easier to be around than anyone you've ever known. You leave both of them without saying goodbye, give no explanation as to your sudden departure, all but bolt after Cuba (another trauma, another set of bad dreams, another reason to not sleep at night.)

You spend a year laying on the couch of a family who doesn’t care about you. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, it’s sort of amazing that you survive at all.

The mother drops a baby in your arms one day, and you decide, then and there, that you’re going to live, God fucking help you, you're going to live.

You never really plan on going back. Your brain isn't used to planning for the future. Days come and go, and you take them one at a time because you aren't well enough to plan for something next week, or a year from now. You miss Hank, you miss Darwin, you even miss the rest of the team, but you left so abruptly that it’s completely foreign to you to consider that they might miss you too. You were so intent on making them hate you that you’re sure they do, that you can’t imagine that, in a year, they might have grown fond of you. 

But the woman leaves your baby bleeding on the floor one day, leaves him screaming and crying on the kitchen floor, and you bolt. You have nowhere else to go, so you go back to that mansion, back to the house-turned-school that’s too big for you. With a baby in your arms, you go to the closest thing to _home_ that you think you've ever known.

(Hank did miss you, somehow. You're a little baffled.)

(So did Darwin, although you don’t find that out for a while.)


End file.
